A low ML-decoding complexity, full-diversity, full-rate MIMO precoder

Abstract

Preceding for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems is considered with perfect channel knowledge available at both the transmitter and the receiver. For two transmit antennas and QAM constellations, a real-valued precoder which is approximately optimal (with respect to the minimum Euclidean distance between points in the received signal space) among real-valued precoders based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the channel is proposed. The proposed precoder is obtainable easily for arbitrary QAM constellations, unlike the known complex-valued optimal precoder by Collin et at for two transmit antennas which is in existence for 4-QAM alone and is extremely hard to obtain for larger QAM constellations. The proposed precoding scheme is extended to higher number of transmit antennas on the lines of the E - d_min pre coder for 4-QAM by Vrigneau et at which is an extension of the complex-valued optimal precoder for 4-QAM. The proposed precoder's ML-decoding complexity as a function of the constellation size M is only O(√M) while that of the E-d_min precoder is O(M√M)(M = 4). Compared to the recently proposed X- and Y-precoders, the error performance of the proposed precoder is significantly better while being only marginally worse than that of the E-d_min precoder for 4-QAM. It is argued that the proposed precoder provides full-diversity for QAM constellations and this is supported by simulation plots of the word error probability for 2 × 2, 4 × 4 and 8×8 systems.